The Girl Who Dared to Fight

by Bella Forrest

  “Are you sure this is the best route?” I whispered, intending my question for Lacey. “It’s long, and chances are good that people are going to be passing through. We should find—”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Lacey croaked. “I am literally dying, and you want to waste time arguing about our path? How’s this for a path? Rose, get me to that door as quick as possible. At least before I die.”

  Rose’s purple eyes flickered in a way that I recognized as an eye blink, and she looked up at me, cocking her head quizzically. “I am unsure whether I should do what she asks or not, but my sensors are telling me that her blood pressure is dropping steadily. If we don’t get her help soon, she will—”

  “She’s right,” I said, trying not to feel angry about it. It was her life on the line, and I needed to remember that. I was just feeling the pressure. “You’re right,” I repeated for her edification. If I kept trying to avoid people, it was going to take us forever to reach Tony, and we had less than two hours to get to him. Lacey still hadn’t told us where she was keeping him, and if I kept us moving this slowly, Sage would activate the transceiver, and have almost everything he needed—save for the secret protocols Leo had hidden in his code.

  Once he had him, he would kill Scipio and replace him with Kurt, and then who knew what the hell would happen. We had to keep as much as we could out of his hands, if only to slow things down.

  “Lead on,” I told Rose, trying not to feel exhausted.

  The sentinel ducked its head and moved past me, disappearing around the corner. I looked at Dylan, who was resting against the wall on one side, and then sighed. “You okay?”

  “Great,” she panted. “Just peachy keen. Let’s keep moving.”

  I could tell her leg was still bothering her, despite the patch, and regretted forcing her to put any weight on it, but there was nothing else I could do but pat her on the shoulder and then turn and head after Rose.

  Rose was moving efficiently down the hall, pausing at each junction to make sure it was clear before going past it. I kept an eye on the hall ahead by walking down the left side, so I could see around the sentinel, while Dylan walked down on the right.

  Have you ever stared at a point in the darkness for so long that you become convinced that you’re seeing light, like it’s coming in from the end of a very long and dark hole, from a distance that would have to be miles away? After several minutes of walking, I did.

  I fixated on it for several seconds, convinced I was hallucinating. And then a shadow passed it, and another, long lines of them sending the hall into alternating waves of darkness. Instinctively, I drew to a stop, every neuron in my body telling me that running into people during a Requiem Day-level event was dangerous and stupid, but Rose didn’t so much as pause as she headed for the light.

  “Liana,” Dylan whispered harshly, and I blinked and saw her a few feet past me, the confusion on her face put there by my sudden stop.

  I stared at her for a few seconds, unable to put my disquiet into words, and then just sighed and started moving again, pulling the gun out of my belt and clicking the safety off. I didn’t want to have to shoot anyone, but if the crowd grew angry, I could fire it in the air to scatter them.

  I only prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

  7

  Within a couple of minutes, having a four-hundred-and-fifty-pound sentinel as the vanguard to our little group turned out to be a problem.

  “Scipio help us, it’s one of those things!” a panicked voice shouted, cutting through the buzz of the crowd.

  A few startled shouts rose up in alarm, and I heard what could only be described as the pre-panic stage: that moment right before people would either flee in terror or erupt in violence against us. Rose halted mid-step in response to it, and I seized the opportunity to dart past her and slip into a hall lit by several hand-held lights, holding both hands high in the air.

  “It’s okay,” I told them in a steady voice. “The sentinel is not here to hurt anyone. It’s helping me carry Engineer Green back to Cogstown.”

  There was a pause from the twenty or thirty people gathered in the hall, and then a tall, muscular man from the back started to push forward. He was bald—though that looked to be by choice rather than a hereditary issue—and sported a black goatee around his mouth. As he came through the crowd, I realized he was wearing the orange of the Cogs. One of Lacey’s people. Most of the men and women were, but there were a handful of blue-clad Divers, one or two Farmers, who I was guessing had been escorting the Divers and Cogs to whatever area needed repairing (as most shell issues were related directly to the Farming Department), and one Medic. I didn’t see any Knights in the group, but then again, there wouldn’t be any. They would be trying to disperse groups like this one, right now.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, and I had to resist the urge to grab my baton at the hostility in his voice. “The power’s been out for thirty minutes, but none of the emergency systems have kicked on. We can’t get through the doors.”

  I stared at him for a moment, uncertain how much I should actually tell him, and then realized that he and the others had a right to know what was happening. Sooner or later, they were going to be fed one story or another, and if Sage wound up beating me, I wanted to give as many people the truth as possible, so that they could figure out how to stop him.

  “Marcus Sage and Sadie Monroe have taken control of Scipio and initialized another Requiem Day in an attempt to kill him.”

  “What?” he gasped, taking a step back. His shock was echoed by the crowd behind him, as men and women burst into furious whispers. He glanced over his shoulder, taking stock of the group, and then turned back to me, suspicion on his face. “That’s not possible.”

  “I can understand why you want to believe that,” I said slowly, knowing full well that if I didn’t convince this group I was telling the truth, they would turn on me for even insinuating there was anything wrong with Scipio. “And believe me, I wish it weren’t true, but it is.”

  “Scipio is all-knowing!” someone in the crowd shouted. “He would’ve detected the psychological contamination of anyone who would do him harm and punished them! You’re lying.”

  I tried to locate the source of the voice, but whoever was speaking was buried too far in the crowd for me to pinpoint him. Not that it mattered, since as soon as he was done, several people nodded in agreement, all while watching me to see what my reaction would be.

  “I’m sure you will hear that many times about me today,” I said. “And believe me, I know a thing or two about lying. But I am the Champion of the Citadel, Scipio’s human defender. It’s my job—my duty—to protect him from those who would do him harm. I wouldn’t lie about something as serious as this, especially when there is every chance I am going to die trying to save him. Sage has been planning this for years.” I paused and reconsidered what I was going to say next. I might be able to get them to believe this story, but not if I told them he was actually Ezekial Pine. It was just too far-fetched. “His ancestors started it, but he is going to try to finish it today. The last Requiem Day was their first attempt to kill Scipio, and though he failed, he now has almost everything he needs to succeed! If I’m going to have any chance of stopping him, I need to get into Cogstown. If you think I’m lying, then you are free to go wherever you want to and see if this gets sorted out. If you believe me, and you’re willing to help, I need you to open this door.”

  The man and the crowd were silent for several seconds, and then I saw the young girl in Medica white whisper, “Honorbound,” in a reverent voice that made me distinctly uncomfortable. I could hear a few wordless sounds of agreement but had no idea whether I had managed to sway them or not. Then again, they weren’t the ones I really had to sway; it was the man who had appointed himself their leader. The man who was staring at me with eyes that I couldn’t quite read. I met his gaze with my own, silently praying that he would believe me, but ready, just in case he didn’t.

&n
bsp; Still, when he finally gave me a nod, it was hard not to exhale in relief. “That’s what we’ve been trying to do, but we can’t figure it out,” he said, taking a step forward. “We should be able to override the door manually, but the door into Cogstown still has power, so it won’t open.”

  Lacey coughed wetly, and I turned to see Rose taking a tentative step out of the hall, cradling the head of the department. “I might be able to do something about that, if I can have access to some of your tools, and a spare set of hands.”

  “Of course,” he said, but a frown marred his face. “But maybe we should let the Medic take a look at you. You don’t look well.”

  “Bah,” Lacey said, waving a hand in front of her face. “This is nothing. You should’ve been there when I got my leg trapped in one of the vents to an intercooling exchange chamber. Damn thing had snapped both bones and was threatening to cut off my entire foot, and I had only a minute before the chamber started to fill with liquid nitrogen and argon. Go ahead and put me down there, dear.”

  The last part was directed at Rose, who obediently lumbered over to the bulkhead door to set her down. I could immediately see what the Cog had been talking about. They had manually pried open the first door and were holding it open using an expandable brace. But the second door—the one on the Cogstown side—was closed, and on the interior, there were clusters of complex internal circuitry the likes of which I had never seen before, glowing red to show that it was locked and still had power. But although it had power, the control panels on this side, which would normally be used to access that door, were inoperative, thanks to the power drain. That meant interfacing directly with the system to get access to it was impossible. They had to try to unlock the door using the circuits themselves, which was normally a job reserved for IT.

  Rose sat Lacey down as gently as she was able to, but even still, Lacey’s face was tight with pain when the sentinel gingerly moved away, taking care not to draw too near to the frightened people. I was proud of her, for some inordinate reason. She was being careful to make herself as nonthreatening as possible, from the slowness of her movements to the way she kept looking down at the floor, and I made a mental note to praise her about it later. After I got Lacey to see common sense.

  I turned to the girl in Medica white, pulled the first-aid kit off my shoulder, and held it out to her. “Look her over while she’s working,” I said. “Ignore her if she tries to argue. I know she’s scary, but she’s also stupid when it comes to her personal health, so don’t listen to her.”

  The girl blinked a pair of wide eyes at me, and then shook her head nervously. “I-I-I can’t,” she stammered. “I’m just an intern! I was on my way down to a Medic station in Cogstown to shadow an instructor, and—”

  “First, second, or third year?” I interrupted, asking her in a rather impatient way to figure out where exactly she was in her education.

  “Third,” she said tentatively, wringing her hands. “But only for a month! I don’t know—”

  “By second year you’ve had an introduction to how to stabilize people with traumatic internal injuries,” I informed her, hating that I had to. My knowledge of the Medica came from inter-departmental classes I had taken back when it had been important to try to show Scipio what a good little citizen of the Tower I was, and while I knew some things from those lessons, I knew she knew a lot more. What she was lacking was confidence, and I didn’t have time to give it to her.

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts,” I interrupted, taking a step toward her. I started to say her name, but realized that I didn’t even know it, so I said, “Look, what’s your name?”

  “Me?” she squeaked. “Anna, but—”

  “Listen, Anna,” I said. “You are the only one here who has had even two years of medical training. I have done the best I can, but it’s not enough. You might not be able to fix her, but you might be able to keep her from getting worse, and that’s something. So please, try. I know you’re scared, but it isn’t about you. It’s about her. Try to remember that.”

  I pushed the bag into her hands as I spoke, but held it for a second, trying to squeeze a little strength through it and into her, hoping that it would in some way give her the confidence she needed. Her eyes searched mine for several seconds, the vulnerability and fear on her face naked and raw, but somehow, she managed to push it back, and gave me a shaky nod.

  “I’ll do my best,” she whispered.

  “That’s all I ask,” I said, stepping out of her way so she could get to Lacey.

  Lacey already had a cable hooked up to the door and was doing something that I didn’t fully understand with a device I didn’t recognize in her hand. She paused when the girl knelt down next to her. She handed the tool off to someone else and allowed the girl to work.

  Relieved that Lacey was letting Anna help her, I turned away and looked at the man. “What’s your name?”

  “Cyril,” he said. “Cyril Jones. What happened to Engineer Green?”

  “Worry about that later. Why have we heard so many people screaming in the shell?” I asked. “I know that panic is common when something goes wrong, but this quickly?”

  Cyril was immediately shaking his head, his mouth twisting downward in a nervous frown. “We don’t know,” he said hastily. “We keep running into groups of people who are trying to keep away from something, but they can’t seem to tell us what it is. Though they all have similar stories of hearing groups near them and making their way toward them, only to be chased away seconds later by screaming and what they say sounded like… something tearing the people apart. I haven’t run into anyone who stuck around to investigate, but it could be that anyone who does…”

  He trailed off, but he didn’t need to go any further. The insinuation was clear: whatever was attacking the others was killing anyone who tried to interfere.

  I wasn’t sure why, but Alice immediately sprang to mind. Alice and her sentinel body. Sage had three for sure, but what if he somehow had more? More than just three or ten or fifteen… What if, when the Knights had agreed to destroy the bulk of them, he had managed to hide them away instead?

  But why use them to kill the people in the shell? Was it just because he didn’t want anyone outside their departments? Was he afraid they were in a better position to stop him than those who were inside? Or was it something else?

  I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to stick around to find out. But if the people were running from something and had all congregated here, then it stood to reason that whatever was chasing them would be following.

  “We need to set up lookouts in the adjacent halls,” I told Cyril, taking a step around him to look down the hall leading to the door. Just like with the others, there were several points where this one intersected with other halls, as well as a stairwell that ran between levels. “Can we send people out to monitor the halls every two junctions away from us? Do we have enough people for that?”

  Cyril frowned and looked over the small group, seeming to count it over in his head. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “But to what end? We don’t know what we’re looking for.”

  “You’re watching for her,” I said, pointing at Rose. She darted a quick glance up at me, her purple eyes lightening some in surprise. “Well, not her, exactly,” I said. “The ones we need to be afraid of have yellow eyes. If anyone sees them, they should get back here as soon as possible to tell us that they are coming.”

  Cyril took a deep breath, and then nodded. “I’ll get it set up, Champion. Just, please, do whatever you can to get that door open. I don’t want to be trapped here if any more of those things come calling.”

  “Me neither,” I told him honestly.

  He nodded and then moved off to put people into groups. I stood watching him for a second, and then turned to head back to Lacey, pausing when I saw Dylan watching me from the hall we had just exited, leaning against the wall.

  “You handled that quite well, Champion,” she said with an appr
oving smile. “And you were worried.”

  I gave a half-hearted chuckle, and her smile broadened. “See? There’s a smile. Could that be some optimism?”

  “Unlikely,” I said dryly, though my smile had grown under her teasing. It felt wrong to smile, given that even now, my friends could be getting killed by Sage’s psychotic family, Jasper had been taken by Sage, and we were heading in the wrong direction for me to do anything to fix either problem. It suddenly made me wonder how Dylan was able to do it, despite having her leg broken and being halfway strangled to death. “How are you able to be optimistic at a time like this?” I asked, unable to keep it in.

  She cocked her head at me, smiled, and said, “Because I’m alive, Liana. And I know that as long as I’m alive, I’m going to fight to my dying breath to help stop this. And that’s enough for me.”

  I stared at her for a long moment, and then nodded. Maybe it could be enough for me, too—if I let it.

  At least, that was what I resolved to try as I moved over to the door to see what I could do to help Lacey.

  8

  I resisted the urge to abandon my place against the wall to pace the tight confines of the hall, but it was difficult not to chaff at how much time we had lost to the door. Lacey had spent the last twenty minutes trying to redirect power from the Cogstown side to the controls on this side, and thus far had made little to no progress, other than to exile me to this spot after I had tried to help, when I became, quote, “too much to deal with.” I was the fifth in a long line of assistants and had determined that Lacey was just better off doing it on her own. No one could do anything right under her watchful eyes, and it had prompted her to take command, no matter what objections were raised.

  I tried not to let out an irritated breath as she began to talk to the door again, moving the slim pen that helped redirect threads of power over the glowing red lights. “All right, buddy,” she gasped. “Not to rush you, but I’m getting a little tired of this door being closed. So why don’t you just do Ms. Lacey a favor and open it up for me.” Beside her, Anna made a displeased murmur of protest, trying to get Lacey to put the instrument down and let her work, but Lacey ignored her.